Saudi woman wants to give women the right to drive in her country

A Saudi woman named Manal al-Sherif is leading a movement to encourage women to learn to drive cars in her country, where only men are allowed to drive.

The campaigners are calling for a mass drive on 17 June. The group say women joining the campaign should not challenge authorities if they are stopped and questioned, and should abide by the country's strict dress code. "We want to live as complete citizens, without the humiliation that we are subjected to every day because we are tied to a driver. We are not here to break the law ... we are here to claim one of our simplest rights."

40 Responses to “Saudi woman wants to give women the right to drive in her country”

It’d be nice if men in Saudi who just plain don’t want the burden of driving women around anymore (or, *gasp* are progressives) would join in the protest by wearing women’s clothes on June 17 while they drive around. That would make a nice surprise for those Saudi men who wish to beat up some women on June 17.

it would feel pretty satisfying as a suppressed muslim housewife to just shrug when your husband collapses from a heart attack, breaks his arm, or has a stroke, and say “sorry honey, i cant drive you to the hospital”

The Saudi cultural attitude reminds me of the West’s not so distant past. They’re like the Freedom riders from the American South in the 50’s…but it also reminds me of a delightfully funny Harry Enfield sketch.

There is a sexually divided dress code in the US..just go to the beach and it’s obvious.
Men are allowed to bare parts of their bodies that women are not. And some parts must be completely hidden at all times.
It is the law..maybe not as strict, but don’t think that we are “FREE!!!”..

I agree. Saudi Arabia and the US basically treat women the same way. It is more or less a coin flip as to which one is worse. Also, eating live screaming orphaned children and then rolling around in their blood while laughing with manic glee is more or less like eating broccoli. You are killing something in both cases. Basically same difference.

If this thread were in response to a posting about inequalities faced by women in the USA, I would consider it off topic and possibly trolling to insert a drive-by post to the effect that “Yeah, well women in Islamic countries can’t even drive, so there.”

Thank you so much for the male perspective on how valueless it is to mention the fact that there’s still a great deal of inequality between men and women in the US.

If the original post had offered even a smidgen of insight into gender inequity in the US and made a reasonable comparison, you might have a point. To hold up the the fact that on most US beaches you can’t show boobs, balls, or vaginas and some how comparing that the mind numbingly brutal oppression that Saudi women is just insulting to the hardship Saudi women face.

The OP was complaining about a scant and minimalistic bathing suit dress codes. OP couldn’t even be bothered to find an area where women are oppressed in real and serious way. Hell, they could have even kept it on dress codes and talked about differences in “acceptable” dress in the workplace.

Instead, we got an awesomely mindless and demeaning post that somehow tries to compare women being tossed in jail and having about as many rights as a pre-civil war American slave with a beach dress code that declares you need to cover up about 6 square inches on the human male body and and 9 square inches on women.

If every single post about ills of the world really needs a “but in America…!” post, like the US is the center of the world and our moral compass is destroyed without the comparison, could we at least make a half assed attempt pick an even vaguely reasonable comparison?

Saudi women in full black burkkas in a fucking desert enslaved to men and systematically brutalized by state != in any way shape or form US beach dress codes.

Saudi women in full black burkkas in a fucking desert enslaved to men and systematically brutalized by state != in any way shape or form US beach dress codes.

Yup. That would still be the male perspective. Completely dismissive of the fact that women and men do not enjoy equality here in the US.

Women can’t go topless here for the same reason that they wear the niqab in Saudi Arabia: because their bodies are sinful and cause men to have prurient thoughts. The quantity of oppression may be very different, but the philosophy is the same. Would you tell a Saudi woman to stop bellyaching about wearing a veil because, you know, women are being systematically raped in the Congo? It’s just dismissive.

Yup. That would still be the male perspective. Completely dismissive of the fact that women and men do not enjoy equality here in the US.

Antinous, it takes a pretty warped reading of what I said to pull from it that I believe men and women in the US have equality. You seem to be under the impression that equality is a binary on/off switch. Either you have perfect equity the likes of which doesn’t exist anywhere on this earth, or you have inequity which is the same regardless if it means women at the beach need to wear pasties over their nipples when men don’t or that women are property to be owned by men and used in whatever way they see fit and murdered if they disagree.

I don’t believe in a binary scale of equity. I believe it is a gradient. Women in the US have more equality and enjoy more liberty than women in Saudi Arabia. Women in Sweden might enjoy more equality than women in the US.

Would you tell a Saudi woman to stop bellyaching about wearing a veil because, you know, women are being systematically raped in the Congo?

You might want to try a more literal reading of what I wrote. Only in your imagination are you reading anything in what I wrote that implies that I believe that women in the US are equal or that they need to quit whining about the inequity they suffer. In fact, let me make it a little more blatant and blunt for you so that there is no failure to understand:

I do not believe that women in the US have equity, nor do I think we as a society need to stop working towards greater levels of equity in how we treat one another.

This is not a position that contradicts my original position that the OP that some how manages to bring up our extremely minimalistic bathing suit regulation in an article about a woman being tossed into freaking jail by Saudi government thugs for driving a car is anything but asinine.

There is literally no topic that brings up some horror happening somewhere that isn’t the US where you can’t have a “…but in America!” post. It literally doesn’t matter what the topic is. It could be a post about Martians fandermistising the Jovians with their qirgiliputs, and some jackass would instantly point out that “but in America they eat grilled cheese sandwiches and butter their toast, so isn’t the US basically as bad as the Martians?”

If we REALLY can’t talk about anything whatsoever without a “…but in America!” post because the US is the world’s magic measuring stick of morality and if the US does X even a little, then any amount of X somewhere else is basically the same thing, then could we at least have a conversation that is vaguely substantive? If you really think that a post about Saudi women is a good time post about the plight of women in the US and that they two are related, at least make some vague ass effort to show the relation. A “…but in America!” post that tries to tie the roots of Saudi oppression to something common in US and Saudi society is perfectly fine and probably substantive, if perhaps slightly off topic. Pointing out that women in the US have to cover up 3 square inches more of their body than men at a beach is neither substantive nor on topic. It is just asinine… hence my argument, that OP was asinine.

There is a sexually divided dress code in the US..just go to the beach and it’s obvious.
Men are allowed to bare parts of their bodies that women are not. And some parts must be completely hidden at all times.
It is the law..maybe not as strict, but don’t think that we are “FREE!!!”..

I know it’s not up to me (and it shouldn’t be up to one person, of course), but if it were, I would get rid of the requirement for wearing clothes (Is it really necessary in the summer, when not doing so would be so much more comfortable, and so many societies manage to do without it?). Yes, I’m aware that in practice unattractive people are likely to start walking around naked. I don’t care. Then again, I’d also eliminate the smoking and drinking ages, and make most soft drugs legal. These wouldn’t be the first things I would change, not by a long shot, but I think that we’d be better off that way.

in practice unattractive people are likely to start walking around naked.

My obese neighbour could walk down the street in a bikini and some people would say that is an unpleasant sight. If she removes the bikini its just going to be 0.1% worse, so why care about the last little bit?

In fact where I live its not actually illegal to be naked in public but there is a fine line you cross if the nudity is considered sexual.

…especially considering that groups of men plan to retaliate with violence (beating them with ropes) if women dare to protest and drive on June 17.

I hope enough women will have the courage to protest nonetheless. If enough of them have finally reached the breaking point to make a difference, there is hope. Obviously, nobody cares to hand them their rights and freedom on a platter. They will have to fight every little inch of the way and, sadly, many will probably get hurt in the process. But how much longer can they put up with this nonsense? Years? Decades?

On the plus side, King Abdullah has been quietly commuting women’s sentences and supporting institutions that educate women and even allow the dreaded ‘mingling’. Unfortunately, he’s 86, and I have no idea what the next one in line is like. Also unfortunately, the Ulema can unmake a king and seem to be taking more behavioral cues from Dune Messiah than the Qur’an.

America is all about freedom, unless it affects our selfish way of life then we could give a rat’s ass about your freedom. So keep that oil flowing so I can drive my giant RV and we can keep building homes 50 miles from where we work.

The Kingdom of South Africa is the one to watch. They sent tanks into Bahrain to run down and gun down protesters there. Whether King Abdullah had a hand in that or not, commuting sentences for Driving While Female is just too little, too late.

Normally I’d say they should be concentrating on the right to vote rather than the right to drive.

However, it being Saudi Arabia (where your vote is even more meaningless than the electronically massaged and redacted USA vote) I see wisdom in the choice of issues. Once you can move around you have vastly greater ability to organize, and organization is the key to creating change.

I support these brave women and their cause, but doesn’t this discriminatory practice also mean that those protesters likely don’t have the training or experience to safely operate a car? (A catch-22, I know.)

Antinous… Do you realize you sound a bit, well, crazy? I’m not saying you are crazy, just that, well, it kind of comes off that way. Last time I walked outside, or watched an ad on TV, or looked in a magazine, I don’t remember getting the impression that society thinks that women’s bodies are sinful. True, the United States has a very puritanical background compared to many cultures, although obviously less so than others. But really — Rindan is right, trying to apply equivalence to beach-wear codes in the USA, and the plight of women in Saudi Arabia, really, really doesn’t help to make the (legitimate) point you are trying to make. That is to say, you could find many ways of making your point that are more effective than to simply attack people as being “another dumb male who doesn’t get it”.

So do I get banned now, for disagreeing with the moderator?

And here’s a thought — aren’t moderators usually the people on boards who, like, try to prevent people from mindlessly flaming others? Or is that not how it works on bb?